One More From the Google Usenet Archive, Happy Anniversary AltaVista

[Richard Wiggins]

Wow, my memory must be faulty.  I thought AltaVista appeared somewhat earlier than that. Soon after AltaVista launched as a search engine, I started pestering DEC to make it into a product that could be licensed. 
Here's a message from an anonymous person at DEC as of January 11, 1996:

>Thank you for your interest in business opportunities with Digital
>Equipment Corporation.  Currently, we are in the preliminary stages of
>investigating Alta Vistas business opportunities which may include
>partnerships and alliances, advertising, and licensing.
>
>We would like to contact you when our plans are in place.  We
>will use your inquiry as a reference for creating our strategy.
>
>Thank you again for your interest in Alta Vista technology.
>
>Digital Equipment Corporation,
>Advanced Technology Group

Was I that enamored with it in less than a month?? In any event, at Michigan State University we beta tested the initial AltaVista Search Intranet product starting in September of 1996.  (not sure if that was "public" beta or not)  We still run AltaVista, though the original 64 bit Alpha is mothballed.

One HUGE regret that I have is that I did not move quickly to help create an AltaVista Search user group.  As AltaVista has made its way through DEC, to Compaq, then to CMGI and AltaVista.com, and through to today, it has been challenging to express concerns about product development in an effective way.  (I assume that user groups for, for instance library OPAC products help get improvements that everyone needs implemented.)

Let me close with a brief survey:  do any of you Web4libers run a local Web search product? (One that crawls more than one server, not a single-server solution that indexes the document file hierarchy.)  If your library doesn't, does the organization to which you belong do so?  What do you run?  Are you happy with it?

Or do you leverage one of the global search engines instead?  Which one?

If you wish, send to me personally and I will summarize for the list.

/rich

PS -- if any of you do run AltaVista Intranet, we've developed an XML interface to the SDK to allow queries from remote servers so that folks can present their own look and feel for a shared index server.  Send me private mail if you could use this glue.

On Mon, 17 December 2001, "Mike McDermott" wrote:

> 
> Does anyone else remember scanning through your web logs and wondering who
> this 'scooter' at DEC was and why they were so interested in your web
> sight?
> 
> Mike
> 
> gary price wrote:
> > 
> > Tomorrow, (Dec. 15, 2001) is the 6th anniversary of DEC beginning public
> > beta testing of AltaVista.
> > 
> > Here is a link to the full-text of the press release:
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9512151806.AA02246%40raptor.pa.dec.com&
> > output=gplain
> > 
> > >From the release,
> > "Under development at Digital's Corporate Research Group here,
> > the technology promises to surpass the limitations of current
> > information services by delivering the most complete, precise, and
> > up-to-date information of the Web's entire text.  The technology's
> > super spider and super indexer employ next-generation software and
> > advanced networking, powered by the highest-performing 64-bit Alpha
> > computers."
> 
> -- 
> Mike McDermott                     mmcderm2 at bowdoin.edu
> Bowdoin College Library            http://bowdoin.edu/~mmcderm2
> 3000 College Station            phone: (207) 725-3856
> Brunswick, Maine 04011-8421        fax:(207) 725-3083

Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com